Techstars Diary: the road to Demo Day

Mentor Madness was quite a divergent experience, meaning that we got a lot of advice from many different experts and now it was up to us to synthesize and see what was actually applicable.

Our focus moved on developing the new product and experimenting with new positioning during sales calls. As part of the program we would have weekly KPI meetings with our EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence). 

We were extremely lucky to be assigned to Troy Henikoff, a former exited founder and Managing partner at Math Ventures who also used to be a Techstars MD. He was extremely sharp with numbers, having strong financial experience and a keen eye for detail. 

There is really not enough space in the article to give Troy the credit he deserves. He was absolutely awesome. He liked saying ‘What doesn’t get measured doesn’t get done’ so during our first meeting we established 2 KPIs that we would track during the rest of the program: number of demos per week and the conversion rate from 1st demo to 2nd meeting. That last one was 34% when we started and we managed to increase it to 80% by the end of the program.

It was a good indicator that we were targeting the right people and positioning the benefits of our product on a real pain point. Our platform now created AI customer personas with whom sales reps could practice their sales calls as if they were talking to a real life prospect, but without the risk of losing that valuable prospect if they failed.

As we approached the end of the program, we started getting interest from a couple of angel investors and we already had 3 angels committed by Demo Day on Jan 11th. They came through the Techstars network and helped us gain momentum by introducing us to more prospects, as well as investors. We thus expanded our sales pipeline to include some of the world’s largest tech companies.

We really believe that practice makes perfect, so we practiced Gabriela’s pitch over 200 times at least. And as she pitched to our mentors and got feedback, we improved it with every single try. The Demo Day structure was 1 min pitch, 1 min product video and 4 min of Q&A with Troy. 

The product demo video was a hard nut to crack, because we had to be both crisp and catchy. But we were fortunate to have a good old friend, Amatis, who helped us out with our video. 

He did a tremendous job in a very short time frame. Christmas was full of rehearsals and as we entered January I started piling up investor meetings for the weeks following Demo Day.

After finishing Techstars apparently some founders experience what is called as 'The Cliff’ - all of a sudden the program is over, the meetings are gone and you have a bunch of time that is not allocated. 

This can cause an uneasy feeling for some founders. I wanted to make sure that we maintained that fast paced rhythm that we had during the accelerator so I aimed to have between 20 weekly meetings with investors and prospects.

Demo Day was incredible. Over 600 people showed up at the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. There was a warm camaraderie between founders, each one of us cheering and encouraging the others. 

We divided our tasks: Gabi would focus solely on the pitch and rehearsing, while I was in the crowd networking. It was a great way to play to each other’s strengths and it worked! I will never fully understand how a shy introvert can simply walk on stage in front of 600 people and deliver the way she does. She did a fantastic job!

You can actually see Gabi’s pitch here.

The feedback was great and that was the final wrap for our 3.5 month Techstars program. 

Looking back now, it was an intense journey with many highs and lows. 

We relocated to the Bay. We have a brand new AI product that even Silicon Valley says it’s revolutionary. Our conversion rates skyrocketed. We are about to sign pilots with some very big names. As of this writing we have $40k committed from angels working at Google, Salesforce, Nvidia, Amazon. We’ve also got an amazing network of very talented and experienced people who can help us grow our startup all the way to IPO and we’re part of Techstars for life. 

 

If you told me all of this would happen 6 months ago I would have thought I would be beaming on the moon with happiness. But the crazy part is that when you’re inside, it really feels very similar to the earlier days: What’s the biggest challenge to solve? How are the KPIs? How much cash do we have left in the bank?

My meeting just got rescheduled at the last minute. My mind is constantly clogged with tasks, inputs and outputs and how they are all playing into our strategy. 

There’s definitely a better ROI for our time and energy, but we also need to pay way more attention to every second. Even my four hot dogs morning routine stayed the same. Fun fact: I shocked many Americans (including Neal, our Techstars MD) with that one. I’m quite proud of that honestly. I guess that this will go on until we reach our end goal of positively impacting the growth of one billion people.

I feel truly honored and humbled by the people who have read at least one paragraph of these articles. My sincere hope is that my writings brought you at least a bit of value. I am happy to keep you in the loop with our progress on social media, but for now I must bow to you, the Reader, for accompanying us throughout our Techstars Silicon Valley adventure. Adieu!